This blog began when I chronicled a 3-week family vacation pulling our travel trailer from Texas to Northern California. Packed in with our five unschooled children like sardines in a can, we made it to California without resorting to cannibalism. In fact, we had a great time! So the chronicle continues... no longer on vacation but still groovin' on a great journey.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

What's Up - Conservatively Speaking

What's Up?? The usual. I'm settling into a school year routine. Yes, I know, it is almost December. And yes, I know that we unschool. But we still have to go by everybody else's school year calendar and it just wreaks havoc on my soul. But I've finally done it. Since September I have been waking up in a fright, covered in sweat and going, "What day is it? Who is coming over? Where am I supposed to be? What are we late for?" Then my fuzzy mind focuses on whatever day of the week it is. But that never seems to help. I lay there frantically thinking, "Wednesday, Wednesday, Wednesday...what the crap do I do on Wednesdays?"

But today, my friends (I'm sorry for the lingo, I'm having campaign withdrawal), I awoke to the usual panic but then almost immediately knew both the day and the schedule! This is huge. I instinctively knew that Wednesday meant that nobody was going to invade my house to find me still in bed. No Odyssey teams were coming. No piano students were coming. I did not have to leave the house until 12:30. Ahhhh, I was able to relax before dragging myself out of bed and yellin' (see how I am still droppin' my g's?) for someone to clean up the puddle of dog urine. (Schnitzel is going to be kicked off her throne any day now - I am NOT kidding).

So, you have no idea what a victory this is! I even know what we're doing tomorrow! And the next day! My mind is like a steel trap. I even wrote on my calendar today. I usually avoid that at all costs. My calendar is kind of like the scale or the checkbook. You know it's bad but you have to look at it to see exactly how bad and who the heck wants to do that? But I looked. I wrote. I saw. I saw that yes, I had double-booked and triple-committed to several things. But there is still time to rectify and find solutions for this. I am blessed to be able to be in 2 or 3 places at once thanks to friends and family. So I am ON TOP. For now.

AND, Ellie is home. Hooray! She was in Washington DC at an activist rally and conference, sponsored by STAND, which is a student organization of the Genocide Intervention Network. The sign on the fence is stating that the area is off-limits in preparation for the upcoming inauguration!

She had a great time and came home on fire, of course. 16-year-olds are always on fire about something. In Ellie's case, it is social justice. Far cry from what heated me up at her age, believe me. She went with my friend, Susan, who is very involved with the Save Darfur movement, thanks to Ellie introducing her to it. Her son went, too, and he is one of Ellie's best friends. He is on fire for math. They've been good friends since they were very little. Here is a picture of them at the Tents of Hope display. They helped set up tents. They are actually happy to be there but are both wearing their "how long do we have to stand here while you try and focus the camera" faces.

And here she is out of focus - but hey, it is all I've got of her marching.

They are trying to make sure that the genocide in Sudan stays on President-Elect Obama's "to-do" list in his first 100 days in office. This was a transition rally. She intends to go back in April for another rally marking Obama's 100th day in office.

Speaking of President - Elect Obama, Ellie said it was an Obama-fest in DC. She brought me an official inaugural pin. I was like, "Is this all you brought me? A lousy pin?" And Ellie says, "Hey dude, it was like $3 and I used my own money." This, from a child who just flew to DC and spent one of the nights there in a fairly swanky hotel that I paid for WITH MY OWN MONEY. And she has more discretionary income that I do because ALL of her income is freakin' discretionary. My cash flow is more of a balancing act. And I have never been known to use discretion.

I have not checked http://www.politico.com/ in two days. I have been trying to do this without medication, although I did have a margarita on Monday. I heard that Palin didn't know that Africa was a continent and not a country and I didn't immediately get online and see what all the blogs were saying about it. See? I am getting better. And better. And better. But like any good junkie, before I take the final plunge I am going to splurge. We're having a post-election party! Yay! It is kind of like eating a Big Mac the night before you go on a diet. So, we're having this party. We'll invite all of our "Progressive" friends and some of our Conservative friends who are really fun at parties. We will be hanging in the back yard around a fire pit with guitars and beer and a slew of kids running around.

Speaking of Conservatively Persuaded People, my BCF (best conservative friend) and I will soon be holding our own version of the changing of the guard. I will be peeling my protest stickers off the back of my van and she will be putting hers up. We both homeschool and we both drive honest-to-God busses. One good thing for Conservative Homeschoolers that will come out of an Obama administration is that they will finally have socialized kids! Ha! Get it? Socialized government....socialized kids. I am so hilarious.

So it is no secret that I have not gotten along well with all the Conservatives in my midst and my midst is freakin' huge, believe me. While most of the metro areas in our state went blue, all the rural areas stayed red. Although I just looked at the election results and one of our polling places, the local Catholic Church, went overwhelmingly Obama. That's not saying that it was all members of the church who voted for Obama - it is the only Catholic church in our town so its members live all over the place. I think it has more to do with the fact that it is "in town" and not in any of the larger residential neighborhoods on the outskirts of town. Although there was at least one Catholic priest at our Democratic Convention, I do not think he was the priest of this church. So all I'm saying is, if you go to this church please don't assume I am making any God-Forbid associations between it and Obama. Good Lord.

Anyway, so I was saying how the metro areas of the state, San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas, went Obama. Rural areas didn't. And Texas is obviously largely rural. I am way rural, my friends. You could even say I am in the Real America. I have more cows than kids. So, what I have been shootin' at is that a few of the Conservatives in my midst took it upon themselves to pepper me with anti-Obama e-mails, most of which were ridiculous lies that could have been checked out on Snopes had the senders not been so blindly delirious in their zealousness to spread the love. They flipped me off, glared at my bumper stickers, and just generally made me uncomfortable. A few made unsolicited personal appeals to me, asking me to change my vote as if the future of the entire planet rested upon it. Here in Texas, which was destined to have stayed red no matter what, they could have left me well enough alone and it wouldn't have changed a thing. Yet, they were not content to do so.

They will not be coming to the party.

On the other hand, I have Conservative friends who have their personal convictions and believe that I have a right to my personal convictions. Simple. They will be coming to the party. And I don't mean to imply that my friends and I don't discuss politics in any way. Of course we do! These things are important to us. But we do so in the "This is why I feel this way" vein. And of course, it is a two-way street. There is never any accusations of wrong or right, because we actually tend to want the same things, we just disagree about the best ways in which to attain them. Friends do not try to change friends, my friends. Friends = Respect. Now if I could work on those blasted acquaintances.

Okay. Give me a minute to climb down from my rather tall box of soap. After all, considering the fact that I am surrounded by Republicans, by far the vast majority of them left me the heck alone and didn't give a rat's behind what I thought or how I voted.

I'll close by saying our weather is perfectly lovely, lately. Aside from the fact that we could use massive amounts of rain and our brown fields are depressing me, the air conditioner is off and the windows are open and the air is crisp. Of course, it is still getting into the 80's in the afternoon but I can live with that. The evenings are cool and there are no mosquitoes so that means that the boys have moved outside. They are sleeping in (or rather OUT) this morning!

I'm signing off from my happy perch in Real America - where I enjoy an incredibly fake, yet quite fulfilling, life.

8 comments:

Wow, I am your first commenter. Course, Juliana is probably writing something while I type and will hit "Send" before me. You left on a G! At the end of your blog, and now I have forgotten what the word was, darn it. Happens when you get old. Speaking of which, sorry about the blurry Ellie picture, everything is blurry to me. I will send you more pictures. I kept getting harassed by Scrabble playing teenagers the other day (actually playing a real game, not on Facebook!)

yay school year! I was a jumble too at the beginning of this school year. I'm taking 12 hours but because they're "studio" courses I spend roughly ten and a half hours in school on Tues. and then again on thurs (no lunch or dinner break just a ten minute break between each class). I was a huge mess the first couple of weeks and now that I'm finally able to keep track of everything the semester only has like three weeks left!

Man, it's awesome that Ellie and Galen got to go back to DC. I had to do a book of themed quotations for Typography chose protest as my theme (I titled it "Stand" actually) and my teacher and I got into a nice conversation about why young people today don't protest like they did in the 60's (I also learned he has been arrested several times for protesting peacefully which was pretty amazing to hear about). It makes me happy that Ellie and Galen are doing something so big (and proud to know them even though I'm a lame participator)

Wow, I type a lot. I'm also glad the election is over and even though I don't agree with probably 99% of the stuff Obama wants to do I have to admit, I was really psyched when he won, for some reason I didn't think America had it in her and it was nice. I'm also super curious about how he'll use his "change" theme in 2012.

First of all - it is nice to know that people enjoy proofing my posts and finding errors. I mean, REALLY nice to know. Thanks. Totally. Knowing that you will be proofing it after it has already posted will just puff me up with confidence as I write :)>

Hannah - yes, it was quite an election, wasn't it? How many votes went for your candidate? A few years ago one of my friends voted for Nader and when she looked at the newspaper to see how many votes he received, she began counting on her fingers and was like, "Who was the 6th person?" So funny! She knew who 5 of them were but that mysterious 6th voter just perplexed her no end!!

One more comment to you Hannah. WAY TO GO!! I am so proud of you and all the other young adults your age for voting for the first time!!! And I know you did more than vote - you supported your candidate. Good job!! You get a sticker.

My mother reminded me that Jack and Katie will be eligible to vote in the next presidential election.8-OAnd since Jack and Joel share the same birthday and year and are also the same age, Joel and Ellie will be old enough too. :-)